The Cambria freeman. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1867-1938, 1887-02-18
The Ideal Home.

The ideal home beautiful is attained
rather by avoiding errors Of taste than
by the adoption Of special dogmas OF
art. For my own part, if have any
dogmas to preach they NAV fairly be
condensed IN this one rule "Avoid
shams and affectatiOns of all kinds.
Don't mistake mere prettiness for
beauty. Millinery. for instance, is out
Of place in the home beautiful.
Don't attach to your chairs and sofa
cushions meaningless bows o. ribbon
which tie nothing.
Don't dress up your toilet tables in
muslin petticOats stiffend with crinoline
or cOlored calico.
Don't scatter startling white ''tidies''
about chairs and sofas as on 80 many
bushes, as if you were hanging out the
wash to dry.
Don't display on your walls china
plates and dishes. They were never
meant to go there An exception may
be made now and then in favor OF
piece of fire color TO help light mp the
room, or where a delicate china painting
is worthy of careful examination. But
hang up ordinary domestic china ?Don'tl
Don't hang small pictures so that their
beauty is lost to any one under eight
feet high. If a picture is not seen from
the same position that the artist saw It
when he painted it the drawing will ap-
pear foreshorteDed and the general
effect consequently falsiheJ.
Don't hang any picture in the home
which has not the impress Of elegance,
purity, and cheeTfulness.
Don't give place TO representations Of
corpses, tortured saints, OF anything Oc-
casioning painful emotions.
Above all, having such pictures and
not warting them down stairs, don't
Danish them to the nursery, schoolroom
OF bedroom.
Some things l would relegate to the
bedTnom-ous Of the way somewere-in
locked drawers for instance. 1 mean
mementOes of seaweed ard dried ferns
or flowers, and wretched daubs on china,
canvas or paper, the crude efforts Of the
youthful members OF your family, No
true lover OF the home beautiful will in
fiict these on his family and friends and
compel them to violate truth by pretend
ing TO like them.
Don't buy your carpet or wall paper
because it looks pretty in the roll when
you see il in the store. Think Of the it-
ness Of each with It's final surroundings
remembering that the carpet is to BE
n background for your furniture, and the
wall paper, unless it is to be the actual
decoration of the walls, is to be merely
a background for your pictures.
Don't admit into the home beautiful
any piece of furniture or implement Of
everyday life which does not honestly
serve It's purpose-no light, fimsy
chairs which an ablebodied man dare
not sit upon no puffy, debilitated sofas,
all wind and springs no FURNISHED
brass sheeted hre-iTons, bought only to
be looked at. and give place to the ugly
little black poker and shovel when coal
is to be broken OF ashes are to be re-
moved.
There Is no reason why an object
should not be useful as well as Orna-
mental. Indeed. there can be DO beau
ty without fitness. Nature everywhere
teaches US the compatibility of the
highest utility with the greatest beauty.
And so with beauty and truth. There
may be truth without beauty, but there
Is no beauty without truth. Truth,
beauty and utility are the insepaTsble
trinity of the ideal home. Let US then
write them upon the portal Of the house
as the epitome of all that is most admi-
rsble in religion, in art and in everyday
life.